ConservativeHome's Platformtag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-2064312013-09-22T08:17:02ZTypePadDominic Raab MP: This week's fire brigade union action shows why we need strike law reformtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b31c69e2019aff8983b3970d2013-09-22T09:17:02+01:002013-09-22T11:30:57ZDominic Raab is the Member of Parliament for Esher & Walton I have huge admiration for the job done by my local fire and rescue service (which I visited twice recently to see first-hand how the profession is changing and...Conservative Home

Dominic Raab is the Member of Parliament for Esher & Walton

I have huge admiration for the job done by my local fire and rescue service (which I visited twice recently to see first-hand how the profession is changing and hear about local challenges). So, I was disappointed to see the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) call a strike for Wednesday, based on their new pay and pension arrangements. The FBU rehearse their case for strike action here, and readers will make their own mind up whether or not it is warranted. I believe strike action is irresponsible. The deal offered by the government is reasonable, given the pressure on the public finances, and wider fairness towards other public services, not to mention workers in the private sector.

The FBU say 18,277 members voted in favour of striking, which is almost 80% per cent support – although that is 80 per cent of those who voted, not 80 per cent of those balloted. Equally, not all FBU members are involved in the strike. Northern Irish members were not balloted. Nor were ‘control’ members. Still, according to the FBU’s 2012 annual report, the total number of FBU members (excluding those in Northern Ireland) is 39,571. That suggests that most FBU members balloted have, in fact, refused to back strike action - unless there are over 3,000 ‘control’ members.

I called up the FBU on Wednesday and asked if they could give a precise figure for the total number balloted. They promised to get back to me. Having heard nothing, on Friday I called again. Their press officer (a nice chap) assured me the figure was ascertainable, and they would get it to me by close of play that day. Still, I heard nothing. So, I tried one final time, and put it to the FBU that there weren’t likely to be 3,000 control members. I was eventually told the figure of 39,571 was ‘about right’ as an estimate of the total number balloted but – yet again – they would provide a precise figure shortly. They never did.

As a matter of transparency, I find it surprising that the FBU did not have to hand the total number balloted. I can’t recall any strike since 2010, where that figure was not publicly available. It’s possible the FBU may later cobble together a figure showing they do in fact have support from a majority of their members. But, given my due diligence and the response I received, it’s reasonable to assume they don’t.

That brings back into play the debate about strike law reform, and the need for a voting threshold of support from 50 per cent of balloted members for strike action to proceed. Since 2011, I have been arguing in favour of such reform here and here – in particular, for emergency services where the scope for disruption is so acute. In short, if union bosses can’t muster majority support from their own members, why should they be allowed to disrupt the hard-working majority across the country?

It’s worth remembering that unions expect all their members to strike, whether or not they voted in favour. So, a threshold would also inject some democratic legitimacy into their own internal process. Far from an attack on rank and file members, it would empower them. Union bosses say MPs backing strike law reform, with less than half the vote themselves (as most are), are hypocrites. That is chaff. The fact is that everyone affected by the decisions of their MP gets to vote for him or her. But, the wider public affected by strike action don’t get a say in a strike ballot. The power to strike (and the immunity from being sued for the consequences) is unique to union bosses. It allows a minority to wield considerable power over the majority. That is why a safeguard is required to prevent abuse.

When I first raised this in Parliament, in 2011, some suggested it was an attempt to rekindle old battle lines from the 1980s, and that the public wouldn’t support reform. That year, we suffered the most days lost to strike action since the poll tax riots of 1990. YouGov polled support for the reform at 2 to 1 in favour. By, September 2012, it was three to one in favour. The case for reform remains as compelling as ever. As this week’s FBU strike demonstrates, the hard-working majority need protection from the disruption and chaos threatened by out-of-touch union leaders wielding undemocratic strike powers.

Kathy Gyngell: Conservatives have capitulated to the feminist lie on families and marriagetag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b31c69e2019aff717bb9970c2013-09-22T08:57:48+01:002013-09-22T07:57:48ZKathy Gyngell is Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies Saving the family is as desperate as saving Private Ryan. It may already be too late. In twenty years time the graveyard may be silent but for tombstones -...Conservative Home

Saving
the family is as desperate as saving Private Ryan. It may already be too late.
In twenty years time the graveyard may be silent but for tombstones - no one to
reflect on whether the battle was worth it. New
figures show that belief in marriage has collapsed. Only half those 25 years ago believe a couple should
marry before having children according the British Social Attitudes Survey

This
follows a new all time marriage rate low, half all births (47.5 per cent) outside
marriage; three million children in single parent households – mainly mother
led; and record numbers of 45 to 64 year olds (two and a half
million) living alone with no spouse, partner or children to comfort
them.

The
council estate ‘men deserts’ - where children’s prospects are so poor – look here
to stay. So
too the largely futile but well meaning ‘early’
and ‘supporting problem families’ interventions (marriage disadvantage
reduction policies). For it seems that the case for marriage has been lost, made so
forcibly by Jill Kirby at the Centre for Policy Studies, Iain Duncan Smith at the
Centre for Social Justice and most recently by the Marriage Foundation.

It seems neither to have influenced public opinion nor
politicians. No surprise as far as Labour
is concerned, but for the Conservatives it provided a new psychosocial
explanation of fatherless family disadvantage and the pro marriage policy means
to rectify it. But from day one in office they backtracked. Why? In a nutshell, the savagery of radical and irrational feminist
ideology that laid the family low in the first place.

This intolerance displayed itself last week at the Lib Dems Conference.
Not content with killing off the one earner married family, a new Transferable Tax
Allowances w termed prejudicial and discriminatory, “only benefiting that
minority of couples who conformed to a Tory ideal of what relationships ought
to look like”. In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
So said George Orwell.

Conservatives are not revolutionaries. They have capitulated to the feminist lie. The
public as ever responds rationally to the financial incentives and
disincentives confronting them. It
is easy to forget how feminism has changed balance between the family and the
state over the last 25 years. Harriet
Harman’s triumphalist marking of Gordon Brown’s first Budget as, “the end of
the assumption that families consist of a male breadwinner and a female
helpmate in the home,” culminated in an Equalities Bill (enacted by the
Coalition) and one way maternal employment policies and childcare policies

Today,
Lord Lawson admits his failure to persuade Mrs. Thatcher to include
transferable allowances in their independent taxation reform in 1988 had far
reaching consequences. It set in train the abolition of the married couples
allowance, and George Osborne’s final death knell for family responsibility for
children – capping child benefit.

But
these financial blows alone do not account for the scale of family breakdown
and dependency in post marriage Britain. In the decade before independent
taxation reform the number of single mothers doubled from 330,000 to 770,000, newly
supported on lone parent benefit. By
1990, the American Social Scientist Charles Murray noted the emergence of
British underclass resulting from this rising rate of illegitimacy.

Its
human face was (and is) socially marginal, unemployed men for whom there was no
compelling reason to seek work or any incentive to obey social rules – least of
all the marriage rule. Politicians, such as Frank Field, seeing the true costs, were prepared to think the unthinkable.
They were outgunned by the Polly Toynbee and Harriet Harman school of feminism. A
multi-billion pound juggernaut of working and child tax credits (benefits)
was set in motion to redress welfare dependency. It has increased it.

They
have made the married choice harder, the 'couple penalty’ a steeper challenge.
Today, the Marriage Foundation reports 240,000 couples claiming to be
apart to get lone parent tax credits worth £7,100.00 (rising to £9,985. 00
where there are two children). No
wonder working class people have concluded marriage is not a realistic option
for them, with no tax or ‘welfare’ advantages to a marriage certificate.

Only
richer folk can afford marriage amongst whom is it rising, knowing it helps
cement their wealth and their children’s success. It does not mean the poor are
against the idea of marriage. They are not, but not, as one study has
suggested, to ‘their’ own men. Their
doubt is whether marriage is a realistic option, not a fundamental rejection of
marriage as an ideal [1].

Yet
despite a crescendo of anxiety about the collapse of boys’ morale and
performance, feminist solutions to ‘the men problem’ persist. Maternal
employment tops their agenda despite a rise in female employment of more than a
quarter of a million since 2008 against a male fall of 70,000. Reconstructing
men and dissolving gender differences - providing paternity leave, bullying
them into becoming domestic helpers, are still the order of the day.

So
while the introduction of a transferable tax allowance is essential it is not
enough. Feminism
has to be reigned back and families freed to decide their own division of
labour. A
backlash against radical feminism has begun but has not yet arrived at
Westminster. In many crucial respects
younger adults are becoming more, not less, old fashioned in their values.

On
gender roles younger women have ideas that are closer to their grandmothers
than to their mothers. This is what Geoff’s Dench’s analysis of the
recently published British Social Attitudes data tells us. Far
from the incomplete gender revolution spun by the BSA spun we may be witnessing
the start of a counter-revolution. Today it is not the young but
the middle-aged baby boomers who hold the most feminist views.

For
example younger women (those aged 18-39) are more likely than their own mothers
to think a pre-school child will suffer if its mother works, significantly up
since1994. The number who think what women mostwant is a home and children has doubled in ten
years. Half now think that being a housewife is as fulfilling as
working for pay.

All
three political parties are out of touch. The Conservatives should have no need to
genuflect the Harman and Toynbee baby boomer generation now it is increasingly
out of step. They
are no longer modern; and their desire to destroy the marriage advantage for
others is perverse.

Peter Walker: The consequences of the defenestration of Godfrey Bloomtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b31c69e2019aff8587da970c2013-09-21T17:44:26+01:002013-09-21T16:44:56ZPeter Walker retired as Deputy Chief Constable of North Yorkshire Police in 2003. He now owns SuperSkills, a Construction Training Business in Thirsk, and is on the Westminster candidates' list. Follow Peter on Twitter. Hands up everybody who has at...Conservative Home

Peter Walker retired as Deputy Chief Constable of North Yorkshire Police in 2003. He now owns SuperSkills, a Construction Training Business in Thirsk, and is on the Westminster candidates' list. Follow Peter on Twitter.

Hands up everybody who has at any time, said something stupid at work. Now hands up those who didn't give an accurate answer to the first question. OK - that's everybody then. That's the issue regarding the Godfrey Bloom debacle at UKIP's conference. Ann Treneman was there and provides a word by word report of the unfolding PR disaster in The Times (£) today.

Like any boss, Nigel Farage blew his top - on television, he looked as though steam was about to come from his ears. His plan was that this year's UKIP conference would demonstrate it was a grown up party - not just ready to fight the European Elections, but gain momentum for the longer haul to May 2015. Bloom had scuppered UKIP's plans spectacularly.

Many would say that he has been heading in this direction for some time. This was not his first gaffe. He has done it before, and the response from his party hasn't made him change. In fact, the "happy chappie, booze n' fags" UKIP image has, it could be argued, played to a considerable section of the electorate. People like entertainment; UKIP has been providing it.

A more composed Farage took to the prime slot on "Today" this morning and two key issues emerged. After a series of increasingly direct questions from John Humphrys, he ruled out any agreements with the Conservatives concerning the 2015 General Election. Additionally, he made it clear that UKIP cannot afford to have people behaving the way that Bloom did if they want to be taken seriously.

The former puts us on notice that campaigns in every seat will have to recognise, analyse and deal with a threat to our vote from UKIP. I live in one of the safest seats in the country, yet meet people on the doorstep who will support UKIP, having moved their allegiance from us. In my local ward (usually rock solid Conservative), an "unknown" UKIP candidate, who didn't give any impression of actively campaigning, got 25 per cent of the vote.

This means our job in the run up to 2015 gets tougher. Analysing the UKIP threat ward by ward. Targeting those that have UKIP voters, so our approach to the renegotiation about and referendum on our place in Europe gets across to voters. Exposing UKIP's frailties about taxation and spending because of their commitments to spend more, yet tax less. I'm not sure it's enough to say "Vote UKIP, get Labour" because, whilst that is true, Farage is already deflecting it.Personal contact. Give people a "Good Listening To". Understand why their attitudes have shifted. Put our case logically. Because the second - arguably more interesting - issue that came from this morning's interview may prove significant.

UKIP have started to rein in their "mavericks". Their people can no longer say what they like and get away with it. With that will go their attractiveness to many voters. Godfrey Bloom cut a lonely figure as he was filmed leaving the UKIP conference having been suspended from the party whip. But with him went that party's advantage - in being listened to without challenge. From now on, they will have to make their arguments stick in a manner the rest of the parties have always had to - less of the rhetoric and with numbers that add up. Bring it on!

Mohammed Amin: Immigration is not a racial issue todaytag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b31c69e2019aff67dc72970b2013-09-21T12:48:21+01:002013-09-21T11:49:28ZMohammed Amin is Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum. He is writing in a personal capacity. Follow Mohammed on Twitter. For several decades, racists who thought it politically incorrect to attack people for being black or brown instead protested...Mohammed Amin

For several decades, racists who thought it politically incorrect to attack people for being black or brown instead protested about “immigration”, and wanted to send immigrants “back where they came from”. This desire to repatriate applied irrespective of whether the black or brown person in question was actually an immigrant or someone who had been born in Britain. Such details did not matter, since what the racists were really against was the idea that Britons could be anything other than people with white skins, preferably of Anglo-Saxon origin.

While racists can be found in all political parties, it is a historical fact that every significant piece of legislation promoting racial equality was enacted by Labour governments, usually over Conservative opposition. Meanwhile from time to time some Conservative politicians would come out with speeches making it clear that they would rather people like me left the country, if necessary with the assistance of a repatriation grant. While such racist policies never became official Conservative policy, we had enough such people within our party to ruin our brand with most people from an ethnic minority background. That is why even today if someone is from an ethnic minority, even if they are highly educated or rich, they are much more likely to vote Labour than vote Conservative. If you have not already read it, I recommend Lord Ashcroft's report "Degrees of Separation."

However, over the last decade, the automatic association of the word “immigrant” and “ethnic minority” has ceased to apply.

I realised this for the first time a few years ago when I was doing some telephone canvassing from CCHQ. I was phoning homes in West London. From both peoples’ names and from their accents, I could tell that many of the people I was telephoning were from an ethnic minority background. When, in accordance with the canvassing script, I asked them to itemise issues that they felt strongly about, almost all named immigration as their first or second choice without any prompting from me. Until then, I had never experienced ethnic minorities expressing concern about levels of immigration.

I believe the reason why the “immigrant = ethnic minority” association has broken down has been the high level of immigration from Central and Eastern Europe after the accession of Poland and nine other countries to the EU in 2004. For the first time, allegedly problematical immigrants were white, instead of having black or brown skins.

However the change in the way people think is not yet universal.

As an example, when I saw pictures of the recent Home Office “illegal immigrants go home” mobile advertisements, I was sceptical about whether they would achieve anything, but I did not feel offended, and did not regard them as coded language aimed at British citizens or foreign ethnic minority individuals lawfully present in the UK. However many people, both ethnic minorities and whites, did find them genuinely offensive and considered them as dog whistle politics with a real message of “ethnic minorities please leave.” Such reactions demonstrate that there is still a strong residual association in many peoples’ minds between expressing concern about immigration (even illegal immigration) and racism.

Political implications

We need to remain acutely conscious of how our words will be perceived by voters. Since we cannot expect a fair hearing (e.g. the case of the mobile adverts) we need to anticipate possible adverse reactions by emphasising the fairness of our policies, and to recognise the issues they present for some groups. For example:

At every opportunity, we should emphasise that the citizens of a country always have an absolute right to decide who is allowed to immigrate into it. This may sound unexceptional, but the reality is that many people who protest about immigration controls have never really thought about their position on that most fundamental of questions.

Requiring potential immigrants to be fluent in English poses no problems for any Australians, but can be challenging for many black or brown foreigners. We should stick to our guns on the policy, but at every opportunity emphasise the many millions of non-white English speakers in countries such as the Philippines and India.

The requirement for a UK based spouse to have a particular level of earnings before their foreign spouse can immigrate to the UK is protested by many people from an ethnic minority background. We should stick to the policy while emphasising that it is applied to spouses of all ethnicities, and remind complainants that all British taxpayers have a vested interest in not having incoming spouses become a burden to the taxpayer.

Rory Meakin: We must acknowledge that our planning rules stop homes being builttag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b31c69e2019aff81b258970b2013-09-21T06:30:05+01:002013-09-22T19:01:30ZRory Meakin is Head of Tax Policy at the Taxpayers Alliance and was lead researcher to the UK Tax Commission. Follow Rory on Twitter. Natalie Elphicke of Million Homes, Million Lives wrote earlier this week on this site, about the...Conservative Home

Natalie Elphicke of Million Homes, Million Lives wrote earlier this week on this site, about the pressing need for more homes, saying that planning is not the problem that is stopping enough homes from being built. It’s great that she is bringing attention both to the root cause of the housing crisis and the problems it causes for people’s lives. She is right to call for Land Registry data to be made freely available, and right to identify tax as a major part of why house builders aren’t building enough houses. But we need to be realistic about the fact that planning restrictions are restricting builders and developers, too. Opening up Land Registry data and cutting taxes will help, but they won’t be enough alone to provide the million homes that Natalie Elphicke rightly says we need. So we must acknowledge the effect that restrictions are having on the supply of new homes and then we must look at what kind of reforms might help us get the homes we need.

Restrictions restrict

The entire and only point of the planning system is to stop certain buildings being built (and to stop a small proportion of existing buildings from being demolished, for heritage reasons). All the planning system does is approve applications for permission to build things, or refuse permission. It does this for homes in three main ways.

First, in urban areas, it stops applicants from building as many homes as they’d like to, on the grounds of the size of the proposed buildings. Secondly, in rural, commercial and industrial areas, it stops applicants from building as many homes as they’d like to, on the grounds that the law often demands that the land in question cannot be used for residential purposes. Thirdly, in all areas, it stops applicants from building homes that fail to meet various criteria such as expected energy efficiency, room dimensions and provision of space for things such as bicycles & bins, "amenity space" (typically in the form of a garden), and payments to fund government projects such as affordable housing or local infrastructure.

In every instance, these planning restrictions have one of two possible effects. Either the restriction has no effect because it stipulates that applicants must do what they would have done anyway. Or it stops applicants from building what they would have built, leaving them with the choice of either modifying their applications so that they satisfy the restriction, or abandoning them because it’s not worthwhile any more. Abandoned projects obviously result in fewer homes being built. But the result is the same in the other cases, too. In many cases, the restrictions directly restrict the number of homes that can be built. But even in cases where the system simply imposes additional requirements that the applicants would not have chosen otherwise, this reduces the profitability and risk of home-building which, in turn, means that asset managers allocate less capital to home building and more to other uses.

Most of these restrictions have very obvious benefits, particularly to neighbours. For example, they mean that people who already have a country home of their own get to keep unspoilt views across fields while those who already have their own home in urban areas get to keep development on their neighbours’ land at a density of their liking. And many of the restrictions, perhaps all, may be worth the cost they impose on applicants and the reduction in the housing supply that entails. After all, very few people are calling for the planning system to be abolished entirely. But it’s no good pretending that the laws of economics are mysteriously suspended in the housing market. We can’t just pretend that the costs don’t exist just because we think they are worth it for the benefits they give us.

Planning reform?

So what sort of reforms could make the system less restrictive so that it allows more homes to be built while maintaining the restrictions that people value most? First, we should look at unnecessary nanny state regulations on things like environmental efficiency, the dimensions of rooms and the provision of space for gardens, bicycle storage and bins. Adults who buy homes are old enough to decide for themselves what they are prepared to pay for on questions like these. And on environmental requirements, the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme and other energy taxes mean that the objectives are already covered.

Secondly, we need to look at planning conditions which act like taxes. Section 106 agreements, the new Community Infrastructure Levy and affordable housing requirements impose a substantial burden on developers. They stop some projects and make investment in the others less attractive, which in a cruel irony ends up making homes less affordable.

Thirdly, we need to look at where we allow the extra homes we need to be built. There are two main options, high demand urban areas and the green belt. There is no getting away from the fact that we have to either intensify our cities and suburbs or build on more of the greenbelt. Those who want to preserve the greenbelt should look at relaxing planning restrictions on the scale of buildings in urban areas. Instead of restricting building heights to whatever the neighbours have, the rules should allow new buildings to be a little taller, allowing cities to gradually adjust as demand for more housing increases. It’s one thing to object to a sky-scraper next door if you live on a suburban street. But we can’t carry on freezing the heights and bulk of buildings in an area just because they made sense in the past. We need to seriously consider reforming planning concepts such the definition of whether the scale of buildings are “in keeping” with their surroundings.

But even if we don’t do this generally, we should consider radical deregulation in neighbourhoods where the planning system has delivered blighted communities. In run down estates and abandoned industrial and commercial areas, town planners should step away and remove all but the most basic of restrictions. The policy should be unashamedly aimed at encouraging private investment by making it as profitable as possible to fix the mess that central planning has creased to fix the mess that central planning has created.

Building homes

As Natalie Elphicke rightly says, planning restrictions aren’t the only cost which we lump onto potential developers. Tax is a big obstacle, too. Whether it’s general tax such as Income Tax, Capital Gains Tax and VAT (on extensions), or more specific taxes such as section 106 payments, affordable housing requirements, Stamp Duty, environmental taxes or fees for placing skips outside the property and planning applications, they all make development less attractive and for that reason reduce the number of homes built.

Cutting these taxes would boost home building. But it doesn’t make sense to further complicate the tax system with a special regime designed to avoid the system’s disastrous effects, but only for certain types of developer. Tax complexity is already a huge problem and making it worse won’t help. And big developers are to a large extent a product of big government. The effect of our tax system and planning restrictions is that only the biggest operators have the efficiency and economies of scale to comply with the rules. Home buyers in free, open markets with rules that apply equally to all should decide who builds their homes, not politicians and bureaucrats trying to fiddle with special rules.

I’m also sceptical that opening up Land Registry data will have a substantial impact, but open data is a good thing and should be the default for access to information the Government holds. That doesn’t mean building national databases but councils should release their planning applications data in a standard format so that people can build their own databases, if they want to.

So yes, let’s open up data on land ownership and planning to greater transparency. And yes, let’s lighten the tax burden we place on home builders. But let’s not complicate the tax system in the process. And let’s be honest and upfront about the effect planning restrictions have on housing supply. That doesn’t have to mean a “free for all”, but does mean only keeping restrictions that are worth the damage they cause. And it means relaxing regulations which aren’t worth the benefits.

Nick Wood: Will Miliband's panda party ever give birth?tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b31c69e2019aff8199aa970d2013-09-21T06:28:56+01:002013-09-20T16:23:09ZNick Wood is founder of Media Intelligence Partners and former Conservative Party Communications Director. Has Ed Miliband turned into a giant panda? That was the unhelpful but not unreasonable question posed by former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith the other day...Conservative Home

Has Ed Miliband turned into a giant panda? That was the unhelpful but not unreasonable question posed by
former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith the other day as she likened Tian Tian's
lengthy but unproductive pregnancy to the Labour leader's failure to produce a
single policy of note despite a three year gestation.

Next week, at his conference in Brighton, Ed may confound us all
by having triplets. But the smart money is on him keeping us all guessing for a
long time to come. After the worthy but underwhelming Lib Dem gathering in Glasgow,
the political landscape still looks like a scene from Narnia's frozen
north.

Nick Clegg and his dwindling band of supporters have been stuck on
around 10 per cent of the vote for as long as anyone can remember. UKIP, under
the rumbustious Nigel Farage, have fallen back from the glory days of the May
local elections but are still in double figures, while Labour holds a narrowing
but still decisive lead over the Tories.

Nick, despite some decent press reviews, failed to effect a thaw
last week. Can Ed do any better?

Not if he models himself on Edinburgh Zoo's most celebrated if
enigmatic inmate. So far the Labour leader has treated his conference speeches
as a largely metaphysical exercise. A couple of years ago we had a now
forgotten denunciation of "predatory capitalism" and last year, in a
bid to steal Tory clothes, New Labour was replaced with One Nation Labour -
ironically an echo of Tony Blair's one-time boast that his party was the
political wing of the British people.

But in a world of ever-shorter attention spans and declining
interest in party politics, such philosophical abstractions stand little chance
of cutting through to a distracted electorate. If Miliband wants to propel his
party's poll ratings into the 40s, he has got to come up with some concrete and
appealing proposals – always difficult for a party of the Left when the money
has run out. And his task of promoting brotherly love has not been made any
easier by Damian McBride's graphic reminder of the venomous rivalries of the Blair-Brown
years.

Blair had his pledge cards. Their content may have been mundane,
but they did give substance to all the hype surrounding New Labour. Miliband
cannot even give a coherent answer to how Labour would address questions about
levels of tax, spending and borrowing across the next Parliament, let alone
offer clear answers to how Labour would tackle welfare reform, immigration, the
NHS or schools.

So the suspicion remains that Miliband will stick to generalities
next week. The political landscape may be frozen, but it is frozen in a way
that offers comfort to the Labour leader. The inherent bias of the electoral
system means that if Labour were to poll just 36 per cent at the next
election, the Conservatives 33 per cent, the Lib Dems 14 per cent and UKIP 7
per cent, Miliband would have an overall majority of more than 20 seats.

Labour's panda strategy – relying on a core vote, bruised by
austerity and better motivated than in the dog days of 2010, plus Lib Dem
defectors and Tory defectors to UKIP – may be effective even if it is far from
magnificent. Tories, cheered by growing signs of economic recovery, have to
concede that the cards remain stacked against them – a point rammed home by
Lord Ashcroft's poll of Tory marginals showing a double digit Labour lead
fuelled by a UKIP surge that is far from dissipated.

Of course, Ed knows he cannot give another politics seminar in
Brighton. To borrow another of Mr Blair's pet phrases, a few eye-catching
initiatives will be unveiled to an increasingly restive audience. But
nonetheless the Labour leader is praying that the political permafrost lasts
all the way to polling day.

Maria Borelius: Why I was wrong about the Euro, am no longer a Europhile - and why Europe needs reformtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b31c69e2019aff6d66ac970b2013-09-20T13:55:16+01:002013-09-20T12:57:59ZMaria Borelius is a board member of the think tank Open Europe and a London based entrepreneur. She was formerly a Swedish MP and Minister for Trade. Follow Open Europe on Twitter. Ten years ago, Sweden held a referendum on...Conservative Home

Maria Borelius is a board member of the think tank Open Europeand a London based entrepreneur. She was formerly a Swedish MP and Minister for Trade. Follow Open Europeon Twitter.

Ten years ago, Sweden held a referendum on
joining the euro. I voted Yes – and I was not alone. A whole host of business leaders, including the Swedish CBI, the main political parties - both
on left and right - and the major national newspapers, all were in favour of
joining. The Swedish CBI put a record £45 million into the campaign to ditch
the Swedish Krona, as the yes-side funding outspent the no-side by a factor of
10-1.

I still remember the shock when we realised we
had lost, and I heard stories from close friends about how the campaign
managers on the Yes-side buried their faces in their hands as devastated
business leaders fumed with disappointment. Long-faced commentators and
politicians made sombre TV appearances. A clear majority of Swedes – 56 per cent versus
41 per cent - had defied the establishment and said No to the euro.

A week is a long time in politics, and ten years
a lifetime. Today, over 80 per cent of Swedes oppose the country joining the eurozone.
The issue is completely off the table, with the eurozone crisis in its third
year. Greece, Cyprus, Spain and Portugal have been saved by the bell, in some cases more
than once. Or rather by the little old ladies in Heidelberg and Helsinki, on
whose tacit approval the bailout of weaker eurozone countries and the survival
of the euro rests.

So how could I – and so many others – have be so
wrong? It’s not as if there were no warnings. Some came from dissenting voices
within the establishment, but most from ordinary citizens. I vividly
remember a conversation I had with a car dealer in rural Northern Sweden. “You
know what”, he told me, “I won’t vote Yes because I don’t believe Greece will
manage the convergence criteria.” That very simple and profound analysis proved
bang on, but it eluded some of the country’s leading economists. Or another
friend, who asked whether it really was wise for the Portuguese and Swedish to
share a currency, given different histories and cultures, one being a former
superpower now basking in the sun with an economy based on fish, agriculture
and tourism, and the other a consensus-oriented, Lutheran, hardworking pulp,
paper and steel country heavily dependent on exports. These were not
superficial differences, but a fundamental divergence in welfare, economic
development and culture.

Our motives were noble. To us, the euro was a way of extending the common
market, which was essential for our small country with many larger
export-oriented companies, such as SAAB and Volvo. Ten per cent of all Swedish
exports went to Germany, which was also the single largest market for both IKEA
and H&M. The motives were also emotional. “Yes” was a way to end a sense of
shame or alienation that had pervaded Sweden after our decision to remain
neutral during World War II, a way to promote peace. Maybe my Yes was what
psychologists would call a projection. I made the euro into what I wanted it to
be. So part of the “Yes” was a dream, a Utopia in Brussels - but the devil is in
the details. And they did not work.

However, my Europhilia began to wane even before the eurozone crisis erupted,
around 2004. It was then that I started to work with the European Commission.
At the time, I ran a small specialist PR consultancy, and was hired to arrange
seminars to promote the so-called Lisbon Agenda – meant to make the EU’s the
most competitive “economy” in the world by 2010 (it didn’t quite work out that
way). As I arrived in Brussels I had high hopes. Here I would see Europe’s best
and brightest, working together. Instead, the experience had the opposite
effect.

Our discussions instead brought out the lowest
common denominator. Endless speeches with verbose legalities, people babbling,
talking to no one in particular, autocratic rants from various pompous
eurocrats – all translated by some 10-15 interpreters. It was sometimes pure Monty Python. I remember a meeting when we were trying to
settle which Commissioner would introduce a panel. It took us almost a whole
day as the battle amongst the minor popes dragged on. No, this was certainly
not what I had voted for.

In light of my own experience and journey – from a Europhile to a more realist
stance – I can understand that some Brits think the EU is “unreformable”, and
that the best thing to do would simply be to leave. However, we must be careful
not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The basic ideas behind the EU –
the ideas of trade, peace and free movement of people, capital and goods – are
fundamentally decent. Most opinion polls show that a majority of both citizens
and business want to stay in a reformed, slimmed down EU, rather than to leave
it altogether with no guarantee of replicating the trading relationship the UK
currently has.

Yes, Brussels can be frustrating, but paradoxically, the EU is
also ripe for reform. The eurozone crisis has exposed the EU elite’s
unsustainable obsession with grand top-down projects, often pursued at the
expense of economic common sense or democracy. More and more EU leaders are
coming around to the view that the only way to make Europe work is to
decentralise – and for national democracy to make a comeback.

The pieces are already moving. The Dutch – EU
founding members – have outlined 54 areas in which the EU shouldn’t be involved,
Angela Merkel has said a repatriation of powers should be
possible, for the first time ever the EU budget has been cut, a big chunk of
the EU’s fisheries policy is being transferred from Brussels to groups of
member states – and a UK Prime Minister has actually offered an EU referendum,
to be preceded by a strong reform push.

However, there’s still a long way to go before
we get that fundamental new deal in Europe – and a lot of work still to be
done. This is why I’ve joined the board of leading think-tank Open Europe, to
continue to make the robust case for change. The euro has not aged well. I can humbly say
that I was wrong that autumn day ten years ago. Others were wiser, such as my
friend the car-dealer. Thanks to him and other citizens like him my native
country was saved from a sea of trouble, and I have learned my lesson.

Andrew Lilico: Why we should not ban veilstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b31c69e2019aff7d5130970b2013-09-20T06:51:36+01:002013-09-20T05:51:53ZAndrew Lilico is an Economist with Europe Economics, and a member of the Shadow Monetary Policy Committee Should Muslim or other women be banned from wearing veils? First, let's be clear what this question is not about. It's not about...Andrew Lilico

Andrew Lilico is an Economist with Europe Economics, and a member of the Shadow Monetary Policy Committee

Should Muslim or other women be banned from wearing veils?

First, let's be clear what this question is not about. It's not about whether Muslim women should wear veils in courtrooms or at airport security or passport control or whilst running dangerous machinery that requires peripheral vision or any or special situation in which there would be restrictions on anyone else's headwear. You can't wear hoodies in those situations, either, and in most of them you can't wear hats. But if someone asked: "Should men be banned from wearing hats" you wouldn't think the correct answer is "Yes - they shouldn't wear hats when going through passport control."

No. The question of whether Muslim women should be banned from wearing veils is the question of whether, in ordinary social situations - when walking in the street, or at work, or in classrooms - they should be permitted to wear veils. I say: yes, if they want to.

Let's dispose of another red herring at this point. It doesn't make the slightest difference to me - indeed, it isn't of the slightest interest - whether the wearing of the veil is or is not required by the Koran or is simply a cultural device. I don't care why women want to wear veils (provided they aren't planning to use them to facilitate any crime, such as a fraud). I don't care whether it's because they believe they are commanded to do so by the Koran, or because they want to maintain the traditions of their forefathers, or because they want to keep good relations with their brothers, or simply because they think veils make their eyes look sexy.

Some folk say: "But a veil is a symbol of oppression." They say: "Many women who wear veils do so because they are pressurised into doing so by those around them." They also so: "By wearing the veil these women cut themselves off from those around them and damage their full participation in the rest of society, making themselves more dependent on those around them that insist they wear veils, reducing the power of the women and increasing the power of those around them." That is, I think, the nub of it.

If, what is meant here, is that some of these women only wear veils because they are subject to threats of violence or of having their property taken from them or their children kidnapped, then we don't need any more laws. Such coercive threats are already illegal. The women concerned are entitled to report such threats to the police, and the police should take action. The issue in such a case is not the veil; it's the threats.

But that isn't really what opponents of the veil are saying. What they are claiming is that women are coerced into wearing veils by social pressure - by the threat that they will be stigmatised or cast out of their communities if they don't conform. And I say: in Britain, women don't have to wear veils unless they choose to; and if they do choose not to, those around them don't have ever to talk to them or have anything to do with them again. Freedom runs both ways, and applies to the more conservatively minded as well as to the more libertine. Social pressure is an entirely legitimate form of pressure. There is not the slightest thing improper about those that morally disapprove of people shunning them.

To believe that British liberalism is intrinsically libertine is to misunderstand, entirely, where British liberalism came from. It is to be historically illiterate. British liberalism was born as a doctrine to facilitate the interaction of puritans and high-churchmen, of episcopalians and congregationalists, and later of Catholics and Anglicans. The point is not that we seek a society of the maximum license and frown upon moral conservatism or censure. Indeed, originally the main point of freedom of speech was precisely that people should be able to censure conduct they disapproved of, and try to persuade others around to their view.

So if an elderly Muslim women thinks her granddaughter little better than a harlot if she walks the streets with her face showing, she should be entitled to think and say that and to act out her beliefs (peaceably and in an orderly fashion) by shunning her daughter or indeed calling her names in the street (provided she does not thereby create a sustained disturbance). If the daughter wants to defy or leave her community and not wear the veil, she's entitled to do that to.

Most folk try to fit in with those they want to get along with, and the clothes we wear are a key part of that. We wear jeans when our pals wear jeans, bikinis when our pals wear bikinis, nose-rings when our pals wear nose-rings, and veils when our pals wear veils. Saying veils should be banned because some women wear them to try to fit in makes no more sense than saying nose-rings should be banned because some women wear them to try to fit in (which is true).

Provided no-one is threatening violence or theft or kidnapping or other criminality, British women should be allowed to wear veils, other than inappropriate times (passport control, etc.) if that is what they want to do. And if they choose not to do that, those that think they should wear them are entitled to shun them. That's what freedom is.

Chris Grayling MP: Here are the reforms I'm announcing today to support and manage offenderstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b31c69e2019aff797d4d970d2013-09-19T07:07:35+01:002013-09-18T19:15:47ZChris Grayling is the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, and MP for Epsom and Ewell If you sit with a group of current or former offenders, you almost always get the same message. Most started on crime...Conservative Home

Chris Grayling is the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, and MP for Epsom and Ewell

If
you sit with a group of current or former offenders, you almost always get the
same message. Most started on crime when they were young, would like to stop,
but often do not know how to get their lives back together, and get themselves
into a position where they get a stable home and a job. And all too often when
they leave prison, the easy option is just to do the same thing all over again.

Crime
in Britain today is very different to what it was a decade or two ago. There
has been a steady decline in the number of people committing crime for the
first time. There are fewer entrants to the criminal justice system. And
crime is falling as a result. Better
policing, tougher punishments, more thoughtful interventions by the voluntary
and public sector, often supported by private sponsorship, are helping steer
more and more young people away from the temptations of crime.

None the less, there is a hard core who are different. More and more of our crime is being
committed by the same people, going round and round the system again and again.
Chances are the person who walks into a prison for the first time will end up
back there again and again over the course of the following decade or more. Reoffending
in Britain today is moving upwards. Almost 50 per cent of those who do
time in our prisons will reoffend again within a year. And
yet we know the things that can make a difference. Stable relationships.
Somewhere to live. Mentoring and support. A job.

But
our current system is a chaotic mix of the good and the bad. Within probation
trusts there are hardworking people doing a professional job in containing
crime. Within parts of the voluntary sector, there is excellent work helping to
build stability in the life of an offender. However,
it’s patchy. And inadequate and chaotic. The Justice Select Committee found
recently that only 25 per cent of probation staff time is actually spent working with
offenders. I want a system where
probation professionals can focus on what they do best - doing what works to
tackle individual offenders' specific needs.

Worse
still, prisoners who go to jail for less than a year get no support or
supervision at all after they leave – and most go back to a life of crime. There
is little relationship between where you are detained and where you will live
after your release. More than a hundred prisons, all over the country, send
released prisoners back to London. Small wonder there is little or no adequate
through the gate support to ensure that prisoners are properly prepared for
release and then given guidance when they get there.

That’s
why we are pushing ahead with the most radical reforms to our system of
supporting and managing offenders for decades. At
the heart of the reforms are three big changes.

The
first involves extending supervision to all prisoners when they leave prison,
and not just those who serve more than a year. There will be no more offenders
walking down the street outside their jail with £46 in their pocket, often
nowhere to go, and no one to help them. It has been a travesty, and it will
stop.

The
second involves a massive shake up of our prison system, so we can provide
proper through the gate support. In future, almost all prisoners will spend the
last few months of their sentence in a prison local to their home.

The
third involves the creation of that new type of through the gate support. We’re
bringing in the best of the private and the voluntary sectors to reinforce what
the public sector does. I want to see a new kind of service emerge, where prisoners
are met at the gate by a mentor who has already planned for their release while
they were still inside, who has worked out where they will live, what extra
support, like rehab or training, they will need, and will serve as a wise
friend and supporter to them for a year after they leave.

And
crucially, we will give the organisations who deliver that new service much
more freedom and much less bureaucracy to operate in – but in return they will
be partly paid by results. That’s absolutely the right way to deliver
innovative new ideas, but to protect the interests of the taxpayer.

Of
course that won’t work for every prisoner. There are some deeply dangerous and
unpleasant people out there, and they will continue to be supervised closely
by a new National public
probation service. Wherever there is a serious risk of harm to the public, we
will make sure that it is Government and the public sector that watches over
that risk.

Today
marks a major milestone in the development of our plans. There’s been enormous
interest from both the private sector and the voluntary sector over the last
few months. We’re now inviting them to state a clear interest in being part of
our tendering process. And we’re setting out in much more detail how the new
system will work.

The
Conservative Party will always take a tough line on crime. If we are not the
party of law and order, we are nothing. But in the interests of our society and
the victims of crime, we also need to understand the reoffending problem, and
take real strides to solve it. That’s
what these reforms are all about.

Natalie Elphicke: Planning is not the problem that stops houses being builttag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b31c69e2019aff6bad01970c2013-09-18T06:41:17+01:002013-09-18T05:41:32ZNatalie is co-founder and chairman of Million Homes, Million Lives, and is a non-executive director of a leading building society. Follow Natalie on Twitter. Another day, another demand for a free for all in planning approval for new homes. A...Conservative Home

Natalie is co-founder and chairman of Million Homes, Million Lives, and is a non-executive director of a leading building society. Follow Natalie on Twitter.

Another day, another demand for a free for all
in planning approval for new homes. A free-for-all in planning is not the answer to increasing the numbers of homes being
built. Since John Prescott was Deputy Prime Minister and in charge of such
things there has been a relentless call on planning authorities to approve,
approve, approve, and the rules have been steadily relaxed. But approve,
approve, approve did not result in build, build, build. Over 280,000 fewer
homes were built under the Labour government
between 1998 and 2010 than in the previous 13 years of the Conservative
government. More homes overall, and more affordable homes, have been
built in each of 2011 and 2012 than in 2010. More council housing has
been built in the last 2 years than over the entire 13 years of the Labour
government.

Low housebuilding has been a longstanding issue
in this country, so to blame NIMBYs is a bit lazy. Of course large
housebuilders want clean green fields to build 2,000-10,000 homes if they can.
But that may not what our country needs or wants in all places or at any cost.
Planning officers, councillors and those communities who want sensible planned
housing and infrastructure which preserves quality of life and opportunity for
all in their community are not the ones holding back housing numbers.

There are around 400,000 planning permissions for homes already granted.
There is capacity for more than one million homes on old and disused land,
perhaps two
million homes. The housebuilding industry itself
has enough planning permissions comfortably to build out for the next five years and more. We can meet the historic shortfall of around a million
homes over the next decade within our existing and planned for resources.

The question, and it is a longstanding one, is
how to turn planning potential into new homes, with priority for re-using old
land first. There are two challenges: the first is the housebuilding
industry itself. There is a small band of
huge building companies who build the most. Following the credit crunch many
housebuilders stayed in business by moth-balling sites, reducing housebuilding
numbers by around 40 per cent, stoking up demand and thereby prices and profitability.
That strategy has worked. Housebuilders have been profitable and resilient in
the last few years. Most have not gone to the wall, as they did when they
pursued a ‘build more quickly and sell more cheaply’ strategy in previous
housing recessions.

Many of the large housebuilders are very good
indeed. But it is like having only the big supermarkets, and having too few
local shops or petrol stations. As many as half of the planned sites may be too
small for the big builders. It is not commercially viable for big builders to
work on these sites. That is why Taxpayer's
Homebuild could help, unlocking many of these
smaller sites and releasing the builder in all of us.

The second challenge is information about what
planning permissions are in place at any one time and who owns them. We could expand the opportunity for property
entrepreneurialism if the information were easily accessible. At present there is
not a central register of planning approvals or planning starts. This could be done, and quickly, as the IT platform
for such a service is up and running. We have impressive government data
facilities now, for stamp duty transactions and agricultural land payments. These can be monitored on a real time basis, and use state of the art mapping
services. There is a public and accessible Land
Registry system where you can find out details
about property ownership.

However, we have no national public search or
database of planning approvals or starts in a public and real time way. Such a database could enable a trading platform for planning permissions. It could
enable local authorities to have better information about planning progress in
neighbouring authorities. Councillors
making decisions on planning would have fuller information about the status of developments
and developers in their area over a period of time. Open access information
could allow community groups to actively engage with the worst of the land
hoggers, including many public bodies, who have sites which blight many of our
towns and which are often a magnet for bad behaviour. In short, the
national transparency agenda should have planning approvals in its sights.

Instead of attacking people who care about our
countryside and their communities, maybe we should start by incentivising the
building of small developments, by maximising the building out of sites with
existing planning permissions, and by putting in place a national, accessible,
and transparent, planning register. Let’s build out more of what’s already
there, and be slow to ruin our communities and our countryside for the sake of
someone else's easy profit.

Robert Halfon MP: How a cross-party campaign for free school meals won the backing of Michael Gove and Nick Cleggtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b31c69e2019aff7409c9970b2013-09-18T06:40:32+01:002013-09-18T07:17:30ZRobert Halfon is a member of the 1922 Committee's Executive and MP for Harlow. Follow Robert on Twitter. Some people look at this Government’s education reforms and see them in terms of process. However, as Michael Gove has set out...Conservative Home

Robert Halfon is a member of the 1922 Committee's Executive and MP for Harlow. Follow Robert on Twitter.

Some people look at this Government’s education reforms and see them in terms of process. However, as Michael Gove has set out on these pages recently, Academies and Free Schools are more about improving standards than structural re-organisation. If one side of the policy is about standards, the other is getting students through the door in the first place. Recognising that reforming welfare can take a generation - but that a good education can provide a way-up for disadvantaged children and their families.

Education is everything. Quality education can quickly change people’s life chances. As long as we get pupils through the doors, we can change their lives by increasing their aspirations and providing them with the skills they need. Traditionally, eligibility for free school meals has been an indicator of poverty, with these pupils being outperformed by their peers. This year, the gap in attainment closed slightly, and the number of pupils getting five good GCSEs continues to improve. Last year, 36 per cent of pupils got five GCSEs grades A*-C, compared to 59 per cent of all pupils, and just 24 per cent of pupils eligible for free school meals in 2008.

To continue to close the gap between those who receive free school meals and those who do not, we must make sure that we do everything we can to get young people through the school gates. Currently, pupils who attend a Further Education college cannot get free school meals, even if they are eligible. This is wrong, and I believe it harms young people’s life chances. Research by the Association of Colleges found that 79 per cent of
colleges felt the extension of free school meals would encourage young
people to stay in education. Furthermore, it discriminates against those in vocational education, despite three times as many students eligible for free school meals attending colleges, where most vocational courses take place, rather than school sixth-forms.

For this reason, yesterday’s announcement that from September 2014, all young people eligible for free school meals will receive them - even if they study at Further Education colleges - is welcome. It shows that the Government is listening to Parliament. It is an important step in the fight to achieve parity of attainment between all school pupils, regardless of their background.

Of course, it is not simply enough for children to turn up to school - once they are there, they need quality education, and the Government is making progress here too. In order to close the gap in attainment between disadvantaged pupils and their peers, it introduced the Pupil Premium in 2011. This is a £1.8 billion fund that follows disadvantaged pupils through their school life to close the gap. It is worth £900 per child, and schools can spend it in whatever way they feel will benefit that pupil the most, from hiring extra staff to help those children who are struggling to buying extra IT equipment.

Ministers are also making sure that all pupils have the skills they need to get on in life. The Catch-up Premium is worth an extra £500 for child who fails to reach the expected level at the end of Primary School, and it is for schools to decide how best it should be spent. But the Government is not just throwing money at the problem: it is making structural changes to ensure that pupils have the skills they need. It is changing how maths and English are taught, to ensure that all pupils can read and write before they leave school, and have created the E-bacc, which aims to ensure all young people study the subjects that will help them get a job.

This programme is also not just about academia. The Government has reformed vocational education, investing £1.5 billion this financial year. Due to this, the take up of apprenticeships has increased enormously. Since 2010, the number of apprenticeships in my constituency alone has increased by 78 per cent. This has a positive impact on social mobility as 90 per cent of apprentices go on to get permanent jobs.

The steps that this Government has taken are motivated by a desire for all children to be able to perform to the best of their ability regardless of where they come from, but we must not overlook the positive economic impact of a good education. In 2012, youth unemployment cost the Treasure £5 billion, more than the total budget for 16-19 year olds in England, and according to a study by Aveco and the University of Bristol, the net present value of the cost to the Treasury just a decade ahead is approximately £28 billion. So it is essential that in tough economic times, we take action to provide better education quickly.

However, we must not take our eyes off the main priority of these reforms - achieving social justice. Education is our best defence against poverty. If we give young people the right opportunities, skills and training by getting them into school, we give them stability and the skills they need to support themselves and their families for life. This is why yesterday’s announcement regarding free school meals is so important. It does not matter that Nick Clegg announced it. The policy on free school meals would not have happened without Michael Gove. It is up to all of, as Conservatives, to own this policy and shout about it from the rooftops. It is this Conservative-led coalition that led the way with the pupil premium and free school meals for the most disadvantaged in our society.

Adam Afriyie MP: United, the Conservatives can deliver victorytag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b31c69e2019aff6badf6970b2013-09-17T14:35:11+01:002013-09-17T13:36:11ZAdam Afriyie is the Member of Parliament for Windsor and Co-Chair of the 2020 Conservatives Economic Commission. With Ed Miliband’s leadership ratings in the deep freeze and Labour’s dire mid-term polling figures it is easy to forget that an unthinkable...Conservative Home

Adam Afriyie is the Member of Parliament for Windsor and Co-Chair of the 2020 Conservatives Economic Commission.

With
Ed Miliband’s leadership ratings in the deep freeze and Labour’s dire mid-term polling
figures it is easy to forget that an unthinkable Labour Party reoccupation of
Downing Street is a distinct possibility. This is a deeply depressing thought
when the country is just now showing signs of recovering from their last
economic mess.

This
risk must sharpen our minds. It must bring conservative-leaning people together.
Whatever the differences on the centre-right, we cannot allow a Labour-led
government to crash our economy, undo our good progress on immigration and make
enemies of competitive British businesses and wealth creators, which are
driving this recovery. We certainly
cannot allow our country to return to the tax and spend, big state policies
that brought our country to its knees in the first place. Above all, we must be
absolutely certain that the British people get their say in an EU referendum
sooner rather than later.

The
economic recovery is fragile. We are still at risk of a market shock. It has
taken a lot of hard work to restore investor confidence in the UK and avoid the
overspending and economic collapse of Greece and others. The deficit,
unemployment and immigration are all down while growth, business activity and
job creation rates are picking up.

A
Balls/Milliband Labour government in 2015 would trash this hard-won momentum.
That is why all Conservatives must come together to make sure that the hard
work and difficult decisions of the last three years are not put to waste. Now
is the time to focus again on the Labour Party and its plans for state control,
paternalism and socialism.

The Economy

First,
the economy: These last three years have been a success not only because the
Conservative-led Coalition stabilised the economy and cut the deficit down to
size, but because the Government started the process of rebalancing the economy
away from the bloated public sector. It is a testament to this programme’s
success that UK private sector employment is now at an all-time high.

Britain
became great due to its enterprising entrepreneurs – that is something all Conservatives
recognise. Conservatives know that people with vision and determination should
have the opportunity to realise their ideas. We know it’s wrong for their
ambitions to be blunted by a state that takes away huge chunks of their hard-earned
money, chokes them in unnecessary regulation and clogs up the free-market with
state monopolies.

But
the Labour Party has an unhealthy obsession with the state. They believe that
the Government can and should solve all of our problems, acting like an
overbearing friend who knows best, sniping and telling you what to do from the
sidelines. That’s why the Labour Party can never be trusted with the economy
again. In its march to solve problems, it will build giant government
departments that suck up taxpayers’ money, while ignoring those people who
actually use our public services. The public will be pushed around like play
pieces in a bureaucratic megalith leading to tragedies like Mid-Staffordshire.

A
big state creates big problems and costs big money. Judging from what I hear in Parliament, the Labour Party appears to have learned nothing from its mistakes.
The Shadow Chancellor has finally been forced admit that the economy is growing
again – at one of the fastest rates in the OECD – but we must realise that he
has his mind on other things. He sees growth as an opportunity to hike taxes on
our businesses so that his ‘big state’ can solve all the problems.

The welfare state

Second,
the welfare state: Under three successive Labour governments, we watched as the
Government doled out handouts left, right and centre and bred state-dependency.
At the same time as unemployment benefits were ramped up, Gordon Brown
introduced tax credits to buy off middle-class voters. Not only was this a
costly administrate nightmare it also created perverse incentives.

People
were left to languish on benefits because work didn’t pay, while others were
lost in mountains of benefits paperwork – young businesspeople and elderly
individuals were the most obvious victims. It is devastating to hear that 1 in
3 poor pensioners are not registered for their state pension top-up, probably
because they, like most of us, cannot make head or tail of the system. So it is
no surprise that inequality peaked under the last Labour government.

Thankfully,
Iain Duncan Smith has begun to clear up the welfare mess. The Conservatives
have started rolling out Universal Credit which pools a whole battery of
complicated benefits into a single payment that makes sure that you’re always better off in work. He has also
introduced a new single-tier pension that gets rid of all the outdated and
complex elements of the current system. There will be teething problems with
this heroic clean-up job, but we must stick by Iain Duncan Smith as he
completes his difficult work.

Immigration and the
EU

Finally,
there’s immigration and Europe. What would a Labour government do if it came to
power? Nobody really knows. Miliband has already admitted that Labour “got it
wrong” when it estimated that only 13,000 people would come to the UK and net
migration peaked at an eye watering 252,000 instead. There is more to be done,
but under the careful eye of Theresa May, immigration has now fallen to its
lowest levels in a decade with net migration from outside the European Union at
its lowest level for 14 years.

But
while the Coalition continues to crack down on Labour’s rubber-stamped bogus
colleges, the two Eds have been playing policy dodgems. It would be a mistake
to give them the keys to our borders again, when last time they simply left the
doors open. One thing is certain: Labour will have to tackle our relationship
with Europe. But while the Conservatives have guaranteed this country a
referendum by 2017, the Labour leadership are engaged in political infighting.

With the
centre-right united we can win

The
centre-right conservative family is in good health. But it needs a family
reunion. We must do all we can to bring together people who may have voted UKIP,
Labour or LibDem, or withheld their vote in the recent past. We must keep the
doors open. It is our job as Conservative MPs and as party members and
activists to do our bit.

This is why the
Conservative Renewal Conference last Saturday was just a great event. It
was a forum for respectful debate, where Conservative politicians,
thinkers and activists could explore
new ideas and policies proposals. This is the type of open and frank
discussion between all levels of party supporters that we need to have,
if we’re going to defeat Labour in 2015.

I
have no doubt that if all conservative-thinking people were united behind the
Conservative Party we can deliver and EU referendum, win in 2015 and continue
the painstaking but rewarding work of getting our country back on track.

Andrew R.T Davies: Why is Wales's First Minister so silent about Scotland's referendum?tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b31c69e2019aff71c400970b2013-09-17T11:33:06+01:002013-09-17T10:33:27ZAndrew R.T Davies is Leader of the Welsh Conservatives in the National Assembly for Wales and an Assembly member for South Wales Central In a year’s time, the people of Scotland will go to the polls not only to decide...Conservative Home

Andrew R.T Davies is Leader of the Welsh Conservatives in the National Assembly for Wales and an Assembly member for South Wales Central

In a year’s time, the people of Scotland will go to the polls not only to decide their own destiny but to decide the route we all take as a united country.

For Wales, the United Kingdom is simply too important to dismiss. The Welsh border with England is one of the most porous anywhere – both economically and demographically. Around half of the Welsh population and 10 per cent of the English population live within 25 miles of the border (only 3 per cent of the Scottish population live within the same distance with England by comparison). With this level of interdependence and geographic proximity, it is all the more important to stress how important the United Kingdom really is. It isn’t just a flag or a name – it is about the way we live.

The single market that the UK enjoys has been amongst the most successful of any ever created. Whilst the European continent is almost unrecognisable as a political entity from what it was 306 years ago, the United Kingdom has avoided the same internal turmoil, maintaining its position as a world power - the sixth economy of the world and a cultural and social union united through its diversity. Yet whilst it has existed for as long as it has, it can no longer be taken for granted. There are some in Scotland and in Wales who believe that it holds us back; that it is no longer relevant. They don’t see is how special our Union really is - that Union is about strength of diversity as well as economic and political power.

There have been changes, however. The past 14 years have seen radical constitutional change through the process of devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Some have put the current referendum in Scotland down to the onset of devolution. It is, for those of us who believe in the United Kingdom and devolution, to show what can be done with devolution. That locally-taken decisions often are more representative of the desires of a population; that the strength of communities is when they’re empowered themselves. As the debate for the future of our UK continues, the case needs to be made for the positive things that can be done by taking locally-made decisions.

In Wales, devolution has not been centred on the independence of the individual but a "Big State" mentality. Reorganising health boards centrally, leaving communities without a voice, centralising education policy away from teachers and parents...and as if to demonstrate their statist credentials to the absolute maximum, last year Labour in Wales nationalised an airport! The history of the left in devolved Wales is one of process over policy.

Labour in Wales has remained almost silent on the Scottish Referendum. From time to time, the First Minister, Carwyn Jones, has raised his head to belly ache about our current devolved settlement. He’s demanded constitutional conventions, written constitutions, a separate legal jurisdiction for Wales, policing… the list goes on. Yet, with the debate being centred firmly on our continued union as four nations of the United Kingdom, he’s remained silent about Scotland. At a time when we should be demonstrating why we’re really better together than we are apart, Carwyn Jones has seen it as an opportunity to speak of his pet projects. The truth is, Labour in Wales only care about one union – the one that backs them in their elections.

With a year to go and our cousins in Scotland getting closer and closer to the polling booths, the Welsh Conservatives will continue to fight the cause of our strength as a United Kingdom whilst pushing the need for real empowerment. People know how to spend their own money better than governments; communities know their own needs better than Welsh mandarins based in the Cardiff Bay Bubble. Devolution is not a vehicle taking us to a breakup of the United Kingdom, but failing to put forward the case for unity is. A year is a long time in politics - but not in a 306 year history of strength.

Bad advice is blighting the careers of thousands of young people. Here's how to do better.tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b31c69e2019aff6c2481970c2013-09-17T06:31:12+01:002013-09-17T05:31:40ZGraham Stuart is the Chairman of the Education Select Committee, and the MP for Beverley and Holderness. In October last year, the Education Select Committee visited Bradford College. Whilst there, I met a young man whose experience typifies a slow-burning...Conservative Home

Graham Stuart is the Chairman of the Education Select Committee, and the MP for Beverley and Holderness.

In October last year, the Education Select
Committee visited Bradford College.
Whilst there, I met a young man whose experience typifies a slow-burning
scandal: namely, the inadequate quality of the careers advice on offer in our
schools and colleges.

He was taking a course to join the uniformed
services. He had wasted the previous
year on a course that was not right for him and would not have led to a job in
the fire service, which he wanted to join.
To add insult to injury, this young man had found out during the
appropriate course that the fire service is now shrinking, and there was
unlikely to be a job for him at the end.

The system is failing that young man – and
thousands like him. They need
good-quality careers guidance if they are to make informed choices about the
courses that they take at school, and their options when they leave. This is particularly true at a time when one
in five young people aged 16 to 24 are unemployed.

However, with a few honourable exceptions, that
support is currently not available. Since
September 2012, schools have been legally responsible for securing access to
careers advice for their students. This
transfer of responsibility has, regrettably, been a serious mistake. Schools were not given extra resources to
supply careers services. Perhaps more
importantly, they are not rigorously and routinely evaluated on careers advice,
so it gets neglected by head teachers.
In fairness to ministers, the Coalition inherited a
bad situation. The dysfunctional
Connexions service was not succeeding, and was rightly wound down. But the transfer of responsibility to schools
has not been the answer - indeed, things are only getting worse.

A
report published today by The Pearson Think
Tank reveals the extent of the problem. Only
12 per cent of educators polled said they “know a lot” about the new duty to deliver
independent, impartial careers guidance, while one in three said they have
never heard of it. Sharp falls were
reported in the availability of some key elements of careers advice, including
work experience (down 14 per cent on previous years), careers libraries (down 12 per cent) and
individual careers counselling (down 9 per cent).

This
follows hard on the heels of a devastating report by Ofsted last week, who assess that 80 per cent of schools are not providing
effective careers guidance for all their students in years 9, 10 and 11. The links between schools and local employers were
described as “weak”, while the promotion of options available at other
providers – such as vocational training and apprenticeships – was variable.

That matters, because young people need guidance in
order to make good decisions. A recent
study by the Education and Employers Taskforce underlined the problem. The taskforce surveyed 11,000 13 to 16-year-olds,
mapping their job ambitions against the employment market over the period to
2020. It showed that teenagers have a weak grasp of the availability of certain
jobs. For example, 10 times as many
youngsters were aiming for jobs in the culture, media and sports sector as
there are jobs likely to be available.

How do we put this right? As today’s report makes clear – and as my Committee argued in January –
a key part of the answer lies with the new National Careers Service, which has
done brilliant work helping adult job-seekers.
By working with
- and challenging - schools, the NCS could share best practice and ensure a
competent careers service is available to all ages. Given the NCS’ existing
infrastructure and developing labour market knowledge, the extension
of its remit to schools could be provided for only a fraction of the old
Connexions budget. This is a
conclusion endorsed by a huge range of organisations, including Ofsted, the
CBI, the National Careers Council and the Association of School and College
Leaders.

However, the NCS is only part of the solution. Like all organisations, schools are driven by
the things on which they are evaluated. Requiring
them to produce dedicated careers plans could form an important part of the new
accountability regime for schools. I was
pleased to see Ofsted recommended last week that its inspectors should take
greater account of careers guidance when conducting future schools inspections.

The Pearson report also recommends promoting
another form of accountability: destination measures for school-leavers. The Education
Committee fully supports this. In our
own report, we urged Ministers to pursue the development of more sophisticated
education destination measures, so we can track how successful schools are in
helping pupils into decent jobs.

Today’s report throws the gauntlet down to
ministers. The stakes are high – both for
young people like those I met in Bradford, but also for the Government itself. The education reforms the Coalition has
undertaken are undermined if there is no decent signposting within education
and between education and the world of employment. I hope ministers are listening.

Cllr Victoria Borwick: Why aren't the Conservatives encouraging more events like Conservative Renewal?tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b31c69e2019aff6b7236970b2013-09-16T16:13:17+01:002013-09-16T15:13:17ZCllr Victoria Borwick AM is London Assembly Member and Statutory Deputy Mayor. I would like to commend the organisers of the Conservative Renewal Conference in Windsor last Saturday. An informal gathering enabling delegates to hear, debate and discuss ideas from...Conservative Home

Cllr Victoria Borwick AM is London Assembly Member and Statutory Deputy Mayor.

I would like to
commend the organisers of the Conservative Renewal Conference in Windsor last
Saturday. An informal gathering enabling delegates to hear, debate and
discuss ideas from a broad range of speakers. It was wonderful to be away
from the frenetic body searches, and expense of Conference – is this the way
forward?

Far from shunning such
grass roots activity, the Party should actively be encouraging local
conferences of this nature – if we as a Party want to engage with our
supporters who enjoy the opportunity of debate then every local association, particularly in those areas where we have less support, should be encouraged to
run their own mini-conferences. These should be supported by the offer of
excellent speakers from the Party.

Windsor attracted
about 50 speakers on a broad range of topics, including a thoughtful debate on
“what should be the nature of the UK’s new relationship with the EU”, and a good
debate on immigration - how refreshing that this is now a subject that we can
discuss without rancour. Two sessions on how to improve our campaigning
including hearing about new Kanto software for real time canvassing, data
collection and telling – long overdue innovations to making sure we use our
volunteers better. Yes, there are Conservatives out there who want to win
and make sure we have the tools to do it. There were also everal breakout sessions,
including on our arts policy, and a well attended session on “marriage and the
family”

In spite of the array
of speakers, I gather that front bench spokesman were barred from coming to
share their vision on their portfolios – a great shame, as I think they would
have been well received in a friendly positive atmosphere. No doubt they
may have received some “constructive challenge”, but from those who wish them
success in the long term -not backstabbing colleagues who cannot wait to usurp
their position.

So who
attended? Although visitors came from far and wide, the vast
majority were within an hour’s travelling time with a good smattering of local
members, and that is why this is a format that we should repeat around the
country. Get our messages out locally and enthuse people to come and
share ideas and have the opportunity of contributing to policies and
campaigning initiatives.

If we as a Party care
about encouraging our supporters then let us meet together, break bread
together, and encourage people to join our tent, listen to debate in a
relaxed environment, give your views – I heard members of the audience say to a
speaker “I don’t agree with your view, what about ......” - and
voicing their alternative. When did we last have that sort of
debate at Conference? I believe these more informal occasions are good
for the Party, and say “come and join the Party that cares what you
think”. An active Party with a vibrant and thriving membership is a
winning party – who is going to take up that challenge?

Come on, CCHQ – this is
something you should be encouraging, and commending associations for promoting
localism, let’s build up a network of these events – the old format of Party
Conference is too long and too expensive. Although I shall be making my
way to Manchester, I know that others will give it a miss.